The Bert and Ernie Classification
by ljkwriting4life
Summary: While on her second date with Stuart, Penny finally works out who Leonard reminds her of… [Early #Lenny, Penny POV, set during the Classified Materials Turbulence (s2) and references the Maternal Capacitance. The idea for the story is based on one of Penny's childhood memories that she revealed to Leonard in the Creepy Candy Coating Corollary (s3).]


The Bert and Ernie Classification

By: Leese

Rating: M (some coarse language, moderate sexual references)

Summary: While on her second date with Stuart, Penny finally works out who Leonard reminds her of…

Penny POV, set during the Classified Materials Turbulence (s2), and references the Maternal Capacitance. The idea for the story is based on one of Penny's childhood memories that she revealed to Leonard in the Creepy Candy Coating Corollary (s3).

A/N: I have been been wanting to write a story along the lines of Phoebe's lobster analogy from Friends (because it's so ridiculously applicable to Lenny) and I've holding onto this particular idea for ages after first seeing the Creepy Candy Coating Corollary. I couldn't bear to go over it in my head anymore, so it's down on paper now and I hope I did it justice! I have some other projects I need to work on in the next few weeks, but hope to get back to writing some fic again soon! Enjoy! :-D

*** 

Penny just couldn't keep her mind on her date.

As it wandered, it visited the memory of six-year-old Penny sitting at her small desk and swinging her legs back and forth. She was grinning at her best friend Rosie. Rosie had dark hair and brown eyes, while Penny had blonde hair and green eyes, and they had been inseparable since kindergarten. That day, Rosie had a pensive look on her face – this day was one of Penny's only clear memories of first grade – and Penny's little arm was outstretched between them, her pinkie finger extended.

'Come on,' she urged. 'I know it's a really big promise for life but it'll be so much fun!'

Penny had to wonder at what point she had become so secretly afraid of commitment, because six-year-old Penny surely hadn't been. Little kids are braver, she reasoned. They know no fear.

'Okay,' Rosie announced finally. She linked her pinkie around Penny's and they squeezed and giggled. 'We'll marry Bert and Ernie and all live together and be friends all the time.'

They laughed and chatted excitedly about their wedding plans for a little while, Penny even thought she recalled going back to her schoolwork after being reminded by the teacher that they were meant to be working quietly. Then Rosie had added with an innocent giggle, 'You and Bert will be very happy together because you have yellow hair and he has yellow skin!'

Penny had raised her green eyes back to Rosie with a whining pout on her face.

'Noooo,' she said. 'I'm marrying Ernie and you're marrying Bert. I told you.'

'No you didn't. I want to marry Ernie.'

'Why?' Penny asked. Ernie was hers, dammit. She loved his giant orange head and he was always playful and teasing Bert but he was Bert's best friend, and he made Penny feel safe and happy. She was not going to give him up so easily.

'Cos he's better,' Rosie said. Penny stared at her, wide-eyed. Better? Was that the best she could come up with? He was more than just better; he was Penny's favourite! He was the best thing on Sesame Street…she particularly loved how he caught fish by calling them. Her daddy thought it was so funny when he took her fishing and she sat there and shouted, 'Heeeeeeeeeere, fishy-fishy-fishy!' And despite what he told her about it not working, sometimes it did work, and she and her dad would get a bite on their lines.

She was marrying Ernie, and that was final.

That day had also been the end of being best friends with Rosie. They had both been sent to the Principal's office for fighting in class, they had both cried, their parents had come, and Penny had gotten into so much trouble that her dad didn't take her fishing again for what felt like months. In hindsight, it had been winter, but she and Rosie did not speak again until Middle School, and by then they had grown apart and they were never the friends they might have been, if it wasn't for that stupid argument about marrying Bert and Ernie.

In fact, having a genuinely dependable and enjoyable and kind 'best friend' like Rosie had eluded Penny ever since…until she met Leonard and Sheldon. They pretty much occupied that space now, they filled her Rosie-void, and they had introduced her to a weird and wonderful world of Berts and Ernies.

…But oh my God, Penny thought as she sat at the restaurant and looked at the quiet, scared-looking beanpole of a sweater-clad man seated across from her. Rosie would be in fits of laughter at this. Penny was on a date with a Bert.

She didn't mean it as an insult to Stuart, not really, and she wasn't sure what had suddenly caused her first grade flashback in the middle of their date, but Stuart did look a little bit like Bert. He had a receding hairline, pale skin, and he was obviously wearing four layers of clothing, including a singlet, long-sleeved shirt, a sweater and a suit coat. He looked nice enough but it wasn't that cold inside…was it? Penny was only wearing a sparkly pink and peach singlet top and light jacket with her dark jeans.

Honestly though, she reasoned with herself as they silently perused the menus, Stuart was a great guy. He was sweet and creative, and talented. He was also shy and modest, even if he was acting extra-shy that night; he had barely looked Penny in the eyes since picking her up and they had barely spoken. His answers to her questions had been stunted, but not in a grouchy or mean way, they just kind of trailed off.

Usually guys like Stuart talked too much when they were nervous around her, like Leonard sometimes did. Penny remembered that time when all she had wanted was to sleep on his couch for the night but he didn't know how to just say 'good night'. Leonard had started telling her about the history of the expression 'sleep tight', until he realised that he was anxiously blabbering. Then just the other day there had been that awkward conversation in the lobby about her even going on this second date with Stuart. Leonard had said it didn't bother him, but the way he went on and on and ON about the past, the present, the future… Leonard was a horrible liar, and it bothered him.

It was probably bothering him right now, but Penny had already said yes to Stuart and Leonard didn't come out and say no. Even if he had said no, she would have used it to start an argument since they weren't even a 'thing' and whether they were or weren't he had no right to tell her who to see or not, even when she did ask him for his approval or opinion. So really he'd had no choice but to say 'go for it' and Penny then had no choice but to go for it. Yay.

Anyway, the point was that Stuart was talking too little.

It was so weird. Of course Stuart was a quiet guy naturally, he owned her friends' favourite comic book store and managed to get along with Sheldon, for Chrissakes, but there was just something about Stuart and his quietness that was a little different to the first time they had gone out, and Penny couldn't quite put her finger on what had changed, or why. He was the one who had confidently called her up and asked her out on a second date, after all. Penny had even been a little nervous-excited getting ready, but tonight Stuart just had that squirrely 'Bert' kind of vibe, so when the waiter came to take their drinks order Penny went for a nice bottle of red. The whole bottle.

Leonard would have smiled nervously at her, with his eyes partially obscured by his glasses, and Sheldon might have launched into a warning about chronic alcohol consumption or the origin of the specific red she had ordered. Howard would definitely have made some kind of sexist crack about drunk girls being 'easy' and Raj would have giggled silently without looking her in the eyes. Stuart barely looked up from his menu and just said to the waiter, "I'll have the same".

The waiter looked between them, keenly aware that this had to be a super-awkward date, but Penny put on a brave, determined face and said, "You heard the man". The waiter shuffled off, probably to tell all his friends behind the bar about this odd couple at table three, but Penny chuckled a little to herself because at least that meant she and Stuart were interesting.

Penny had never given much thought to being part of an interesting couple, a couple that perhaps other people looked at and thought deeply about, but the idea was becoming more and more appealing. A lot of the men she had dated, men like Kurt…underneath the hot bodies they weren't at all interesting, they weren't very interested in her, and she hadn't been interesting with him. With Kurt, Penny had just been the hot girlfriend from small-town Nebraska who wanted to be a famous actress in Hollywood.

That had to be what every hot guy's hot girlfriend said in this town, right?

Penny wasn't sure she wanted to be that person. She still wanted to be famous one day, of course, and she wanted to be successful, but did she really have to date guys like Kurt to make it happen? Stuart was nice and sensitive and he had asked her out, and even though he wasn't the sort of guy she had dated in the past, Penny had to admit that making friends with Leonard and Sheldon, and even Howard and Raj, had really changed her perspective on what it meant to be around 'a good guy'. They made her feel like maybe she deserved to be around guys like them, too.

Well, Leonard did. Penny was pretty sure Sheldon had been on the verge of kicking her out of their living room numerous times in the past two years, even if he did care about her (and she knew somewhere deep down inside his whacky soul that he did). But for example, when she had told Leonard that she wanted to date a nice, honest, caring kind of guy, he had looked at her and asked her out like she was worth it. He smiled at her like she was worth it.

In fact, ever since he met her he had treated her like she was special, and him wanting to be with her told her that he believed that she was a good and interesting person. Penny still wasn't over that tearful, 'are you asking me out?' moment she'd had with him a year earlier, or that stunned look on his gorgeous face when she said yes, or the way he then kissed her so bravely and surely on the night of their date because she knew about Schrödinger's Cat.

And Penny had no idea why she was thinking about the cat now, of all times! So much had happened since the stupid cat…it was alive, sure, but did it really matter anymore?

"Penny?" Stuart asked. It sounded like he had been trying to get her attention for some time, and she glanced at him with wide eyes as though he might have read her seriously distracted, wandering thoughts. She found him pushing a glass of red in her direction, and he was smiling at her timidly. Penny couldn't even remember the waiter bringing them their wine. Stuart's hand was almost shaking. "Do you know what you want to eat yet?" he asked.

"Oh um…no, not yet," she said. "Sorry, I was daydreaming." She blushed and returned her attention to reading the menu. "What are you having?"

"I'm thinking the chicken penne with basil pesto."

"Pasta, chicken, you can't go wrong," Penny said. Stuart said nothing in reply and they drifted off into silence again. She knew she should have been trying to ask him probing questions to bring him out of his shell, but she was in such an odd funk and he was being so weird himself, so instead she reached for her glass of wine and started drinking. Quickly. It was going to be a long night.

Eventually, Stuart tired to a feeble joke, and then he laughed at it. He laughed like Bert, with a stunted 'aha' kind of chuckle. He was almost as uber-Bert as Sheldon when he laughed. Stuart was even tall and lanky too, just like Bert.

Stop it Penny, she told herself with a small furrow of her brow. Bert was a good guy too; just because she didn't want to marry him it didn't mean they couldn't have a nice night out. Take that, Rosie. That was personal growth.

Penny decided she would have the spaghetti bolognaise. She was definitely going to end up with some of it around her mouth, it could get messy, but it would go well with the red wine she was still consuming too quickly and just maybe Stuart would get up the courage to reach for a napkin, lean across the table and gently wipe the sauce from her lips and chin. Penny always swooned a little bit when she saw that in movies, or even sometimes at the Cheesecake Factory. It didn't matter if it was an old couple or a young couple or two little kids mucking about; humans cleaning other humans with embarrassed smiles on their faces were damn cute spectacles. It could be romantic too, and maybe a little sexy.

Could Stuart be sexy? Penny remembered thinking so on their first date. He had been the perfect gentleman, and she had even invited him in for coffee hoping that they would kiss a little. Sheldon had interrupted them, of course, and maybe this time her rose-coloured glasses had come off. Stuart didn't seem as kissable anymore, and that was a real pity because Penny was desperate for a good make out session. Every cell in her body went to bed at night crying out for some kind of kiss, a touch…like a hand on her back or in her hair, or those hands taking her top off up over her ribcage and over her head as their bare feet shuffled and tripped towards her bedroom, with his mouth on the curve of her breasts. She wanted to hug him, to touch his face again, to hold onto him so tightly her fingertips went numb. She wanted to…

Drink more wine, Penny decided quickly when she felt the flush rise to her chest.

She took a deep breath, the waiter returned to take their orders, and Penny could have sworn she saw him smirk when she ordered the spaghetti…as though that meal was some kind of universal signal that a date was going badly because the girl no longer cared what she looked like stuffing her face full of mince and pasta and tomato sauce in front of the guy.

It was total crap. Sometimes Penny hated how judge-y people could be in this damn town, but whatever. Leonard and Sheldon let her stuff her face full of their food and they didn't smirk at her like that or care if she was being a slob. Or maybe even just being herself, which was the conclusion she came to whenever she recognised she was stuffing her face and reflected on why. Penny just liked food; she got hungry so she ate. She wasn't going to 'pretty up' the process or go all-salad-all-the-time just to be seen about town as more 'ladylike'.

Penny was pretty sure Leonard got it, he never skimped on her Thai order or forgot her fortune cookie, even when he had to cater to all of Sheldon's demands as well, and Sheldon was too 'on another level' to even consider trying to understand, so Penny never had to worry about him. He only cared when she tried to eat dinner in his spot, or when she talked with her mouth full or stole his onion rings…but oh God, dammit, she was meant to be on a date!

Penny could not believe how distracted she was. This was getting ridiculous. She had no idea what the Hell was wrong with her. She should have been right there in the present with Bert, instead of stuck in the past with…Stuart!

Good God, she had Bert on the brain. Maybe she should have asked Leonard's mother to give her a brain scan on her recent visit instead of Sheldon! Then again, Penny still wasn't sure about the very Sheldon-esque woman who she knew had never helped Leonard celebrate his birthday, or a proper Christmas, and who probably never hugged him even when he was a baby…Beverley Hofstadter would probably take one look inside Penny's brain and declare, "My dear, I'm afraid there's nothing we can do. It's full of mush".

Penny felt tears spring to her eyes. She just felt so sorry for Leonard. He deserved so, so, so much better. But bitching about Leonard's mother on her date with Stuart wasn't exactly a great idea, let alone crying over it. Penny quickly held the tears at bay by opening her eyes wide and touching her index finger briefly yet firmly to each outer pressure point. If Stuart noticed, he didn't realise what she was doing or he didn't care.

Penny had to get this conversation moving or she was never going to get out of her own head, and it was getting confusing up there.

"So come on Stuart," Penny said as she poured herself another glass. "Tell me about your day. Tell me something…anything!"

"Um…we got some new comic books in," he said. "I sold a few today, not many. Paid some bills…"

"Have you been doing any more drawings lately?"

"Uh…Yeah I've got some new sketches. Maybe you might like to see them later?"

"At your place?" Penny asked. Maybe he did want to kiss her after all. The night might not be a total bust. Penny could get on board with a good pash.

"No actually they're in my car," Stuart explained with a simple nodding of his head. "I carry my book around with me, sometimes I'll stop and sketch something I see out on the road."

"Oh, okay cool," Penny said with a smile. So making out in the car it was! She reached for her bottle of wine and topped up her glass. She needed all the wine she could get, so that the next day when Stuart told all the guys he got to second base with her in the backseat of his car, she could tell herself that it was because of the wine, and it would hopefully lessen her own sense of guilt when she inevitably was drawn to Leonard's warm but frankly pretty damn disappointed and sad eyes.

Argh, that man. She already felt guilty. All Penny wanted was to go on a nice date with a nice man and have a nice make-out session and see what happened. That was normal behaviour, right? She wasn't doing anything horrible. So what if Stuart was kind of a Bert. Bert was sensible, Bert was thoughtful, Bert put up with all of Ernie's drama and his boundless energy-

Oh no, Penny realised as their meals came and she eyed off her spaghetti. What if she was actually Ernie? Drama and tease and energy personified? What if Rosie had been right, and Penny should have agreed to marry Bert because she was just like Ernie, and then Ernie could have married Rosie because Rosie was kind of a Bert herself? A good friendship, ruined, because Penny had been too dense to see what Rosie had seen in them all along?

Hmm…no, Penny decided. No, she still wanted Ernie. Even if she was a little bit like Ernie herself, similarities in nature were just as important in a strong relationship as the differences, and they could totally make it work.

I'm a dork, Penny thought as she chuckled to herself and twisted her pasta around her fork. She was acting like she was a petulant six-year-old girl again, when really she should just enjoy her dinner and keep reminding herself that she was twenty-three, and a grown-up, and Bert and Ernie were puppets.

"Something…funny?" Stuart asked. He sounded almost afraid of the answer. Penny looked up with the happiest smile she had shown him all evening and shook her head.

"No," she said with a gentle laugh. "I was just remembering that this was my favourite meal when I was little."

Stuart grinned at her and they started talking about their favourite foods. It wasn't exactly the most sophisticated conversation, but it was better than nothing, and Stuart even opened up more and started talking about his family and his own time at school. Just like Leonard and Sheldon, it hadn't been easy. Stuart had been the geeky, skinny kid that not even the super-smart kids had liked, because he wasn't super-smart so he didn't fit in with them either. He was arty and creative…he was labeled the weird gay kid a lot.

It made Penny sad, but she found herself reasoning that just like Howard and Raj and Sheldon, at least Stuart had gone home from school to what sounded like a really loving family. His parents took care of him, encouraged him with his art and gave him hope…not like Leonard, who had to find all his own hope and strength to do whatever he wanted to do in life from somewhere inside himself. One day Penny knew she would have to tell him she thought that was fucking brave. She was going to tell him with the curse word in there too, for emphasis, and because she wanted him to grin back at her with pride.

"More wine?" Stuart asked politely.

"Oh Hell yes," Penny said with a chuckle. They were onto his bottle already, and they weren't even halfway through their dinner. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the fact that Stuart was only on his second glass. She didn't even care if he was trying to get her drunk.

Shame was for the mornings.

Yet the next morning when Penny woke up in her own bed, alone, and found herself staring straight up at the ceiling, it wasn't actually shame that she felt.

It had been an early night. She and Stuart hadn't ordered dessert, so they had left the restaurant by eight-thirty, and Stuart had only ever had the two glasses of wine, so he offered to show her his drawings and then drive her home. Penny hadn't been sure if she would be inviting him up to her place at that stage, but looking back as she lay in bed, she was glad that she hadn't. What had happened in the car had been embarrassing enough; if it had happened in bed she would have been mortified.

True to form, Stuart's drawings had been beautiful. He really did carry the sketchpad around in his car and stop at random places that he thought looked interesting enough to commit to paper. There were sketches of parks, graffiti on the sides of buildings, tourists going about their day at the beach, or couples sitting al fresco outside a little Italian place. The wine and his talent had completely overwhelmed Penny then, and she had grabbed his face in her hands and pulled his lips onto hers for a desperate, hot, probing kiss.

She knew she had caught Stuart by surprise, and the guy wasn't the most experienced kisser out there, but he soon settled into it and started to kiss her back. God, it had felt good. It had felt almost exactly like what she had been wanting for ages, or maybe that was just what she had been trying to believe.

Truthfully, in the light of day, Penny knew when 'ages' had started and she knew what she wanted. Just weeks ago, when Leonard had sucked that piece of lime out of her mouth and she had comfortably wrapped her arms around his neck, she had felt it low in her belly. That was 'the' kiss. That was it.

Penny had been completely wasted with him that night, both wallowing in Beverley-Hofstadter-induced self-pity, but she had not been so totally blown that she didn't remember pretty much everything. She wasn't sure how much Leonard remembered, they had never spoken about it and it probably was still too recent and awkward to bring it up, but knowing how brilliant his mind was, Penny was thinking that Leonard also remembered pretty much everything.

'You're gonna lick the salt off my neck, do the shot, and then bite the lime.'

She had put the lime in her mouth when he wasn't looking, and when she grinned at him with it in there he had grinned back.

'Oh okay, we're sharing.'

Then boom, that was when ages began, and that was why she was in the backseat of a dodgy car in the parking lot of a restaurant, in the midst of a desperate kiss that actually didn't taste anything like tequila and lime, or Leonard.

God, that night with Leonard, the way they had undressed each other and everything. Penny had taken off his pants on the couch while he kissed and sucked along her neck, and not the in the too-wet, licking-salt way he had earlier, but in a determined, focused, almost-totally-sober kind of way that had made her moan and try to push herself against him while she fumbled with his zipper.

They had stumbled on the way to her room, him in his boxer shorts and shocks and shirt, until Leonard had stopped them from tripping and had pressed Penny up against her hallway to rid her of her oversized jumper and jeans. The jumper had been the first to go as they kissed and laughed and grabbed for each other just like new lovers, desperate to touch everything and be touched everywhere all at once.

Then suddenly they had stilled, chests heaving against each other. For a brief moment Leonard's hands settled on her hips, at the top band of her jeans, and he pressed his forehead to hers and said, 'God Penny, you're beautiful'.

Penny really regretted her drunken response. If she had reacted differently, it might have changed how the story turned out. She had unbuttoned her own pants and pushed them down and said, 'No time for that, let's do this'.

If she had just sobered-up long enough to wrap her arms around him and touch his back beneath his shirt and say, 'you too, cutie', then maybe Leonard would have stopped overthinking. Maybe he could have been the one to take her jeans off and run his hands up and down her legs and maybe even kiss her hip. Then the night could have become more about the two of them, and less about getting back at his mother for what she had said about Penny's ability to have relationships and Leonard's general failure at being himself.

Of course Leonard had latched onto those insults and had wanted to talk about why they were in bed. He had been hurting and he had wanted a reason for what they were doing, and Penny had given him the impression that this was to be rushed, drunken sex that didn't have a deeper reason.

It had a reason, though.

Penny groaned and covered her face in her hands as she lay there. She didn't even feel guilty about what had happened with Stuart in the backseat of his car. Clearly there was no need to feel guilty because she had absolutely no control of what her brain and her body had been doing to her ever since that missed opportunity with Leonard. Maybe it hadn't been the right time with Leonard, in hindsight, but it was still a missed opportunity and Penny hadn't worked out a way to fix it, and now she had stuffed up with Stuart as well.

They had been kissing, making out from the waist up like a couple of teenagers, and with her eyes closed Penny's mind had just done what it had been doing all night; it drifted off. First, had been the thought that, 'Oh my God, I'm making out with Bert, save me Rosie!' and she had giggled into Stuart's mouth. He asked her if he was doing it wrong and she shook her head and shoved her tongue down his throat.

Her next thought, 'He doesn't taste like tequila and lime' and as soon as that notion hit her, the flashback followed and had continued on. In her head she and Leonard were not just making out in the backseat of the car. They were in her bed, and he was between her legs, nibbling and sucking and being the amazing man that she knew he was even if he wasn't sure of it yet, and she found his strong palm with hers, linked her fingers through his and moaned, 'Oh Leonard'.

Yeah, Stuart had been pretty shocked by that. Penny had still been lost in her fantasy when he pulled away, and it took her an extra few seconds to open her eyes, remember where she was, and then recall what she had just experienced and maybe accidentally said out loud.

Oops.

Her eyes had gone wide. She had slapped a hand over her open mouth and stared at her stunned, confused Bert.

She wanted Ernie, and now Bert knew it.

"I am so, so, so sorry," Penny said when she finally had the guts to remove her hand. "That's never happened before. I don't know…I mean I…"

What was she meant to say? Did she try to explain that ever since she had met Leonard there was something about him that had quietly excited and interested her? That it had drawn her to him and had niggled slowly away at her in the background until he had started seeing Leslie Winkle? And then of course Penny had recognised the jealousy and the attraction, but had decided to do nothing about it because in his own special way Leonard was filling her Rosie-void and becoming her best friend, and she didn't want to wreck it?

"No, it's okay," Stuart said softly. "Please, please don't explain. I understand, I guess. Um…I'll drive you home."

"Okay," Penny replied. They got out of the back seat and moved to the front for the silent drive home, and the whole way Penny felt embarrassed at the fact that she still felt flushed and breathless, she had visible goosebumps and she was hot and her heart was beating too quickly, and the man she wanted wasn't the one driving her home from their date.

Once Penny was alone in her apartment at the grand time of nine-thirty, she had downed a litre of water and continued the fantasy toward its inevitable conclusion in the privacy of her own room. Penny found herself saying, 'Oh Leonard' a lot whenever that happened now, and it was happening a lot.

Penny wanted it to be real but she just didn't know how to fix things, or what to do to convince Leonard that he should give her another shot. She didn't want to just start flirting with him, because it would confuse him and he would try to figure it out with his friends and that was weird, and Penny didn't want that sort of flirty-sex-relationship either; she didn't think she had to flirt with Leonard. He was right there, he knew her, he already thought she was beautiful and he had definitely wanted to be with her…she had closed the door on him at a time when they both had been feeling supremely vulnerable.

Penny had to find a way to open it again, and soon.

She sighed as she got out of bed and put her pink robe on over the white singlet that she had thrown on before she went to sleep. She checked the time on her phone as she wandered to the kitchen for more fluids. Penny had already been up during the night to pee, thanks to all the water she had forced down to combat all that red wine, but she felt better for it. Her headache wasn't too bad at all, she felt rested and satisfied, and she didn't even care that it had more to do with her own brain and her own hands than dinner or the wine or any actual male company.

It was even early, barely seven o'clock.

Good job Penny, she though to herself with a chuckle.

She had just opened the fridge for some orange juice when there was a knock on her door. Her brow furrowed as she waited for the expected, 'Penny' from Sheldon. Dammit, he knew not to come to her door before eleven o'clock, and thankfully for him that totally OCD knock-knock-knock-Penny routine never eventuated. That only left one person brave enough to come to her so early.

Penny wasn't particularly confident in seeing Leonard yet, firstly because there was a chance that Stuart had already told him what had happened, and secondly because the morning's reflection on her fantasy that had unfortunately become last night's pseudo-reality in Stuart's car was still fresh in her mind. It had really gotten under her skin and prickled her, again. However, deep down Penny knew she would open the door to Leonard, because she still really wanted to see him. She always wanted to see him.

Penny didn't even care that this morning when she opened the door, he was probably going to ask 'casually' about Stuart and she was probably going to get defensive because he lied about it bothering him and it wasn't his business, and she would most likely slam the door in his face. Again.

But Penny didn't care if that happened either, because in that case Leonard would surely go off and try to talk to Stuart, partly to find out whether he still needed to feel bothered, and partly in a weird way to make sure she was okay. Penny hadn't asked Stuart not to say anything about their night, and she couldn't help wondering if he would. Leonard was his friend, after all.

In any case, Penny knew that Leonard would knock on her door another time and she would open it again, and maybe one day he wouldn't let her close it. If she asked him, she thought he would give her the time to figure out how to keep that door open for good. Not because he was desperate to have sex with her, but because he genuinely cared about her and believed in her and he liked being with her, and together they were interesting. He was her Ernie.

So despite the early hour and in spite of whatever might happen in the near and distant future, that morning Penny opened her door to Leonard with a smile.

***  
A/N: The Bert and Ernie fishing scene and Ernie's fish-call is on Youtube, just for a walk down memory lane ;-) It won't let me post the link, but it's called the "Sesame Street: Bert and Ernie Fish Call".

***


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